Projected 21st Century Climatic Contexts for Change in Aridic Soils

Climate and climatic changes affect aridic soils by providing conditions and driving forces for complex interacting chemical and physical processes. In response to rapidly increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the global atmosphere, climate models project significant climatic changes over the western US during the 21st Century. These projections include warming by about +3ºC to +6ºC by century's end, by broad drying of soils largely regardless of whether precipitation increases or decreases, and, less certainly, by reductions in precipitation in the Southwest. The currently available ensemble of 21st Century climate-change projections will be reviewed, downscaled and used to simulate local surface water budgets across the region, in this talk, in order to provide a context for detailed discussions of coming changes in aridic soils.